Keep On Trekkin'

There may have been a time when you thought of the words Star Trek as the punch line to a joke. Star Trek fans were pasty-faced 14-year-old boys. The object of their obsession was at most cult and probably not more than kitsch. Obviously, it wasn't anything important.

Then you realized how wrong you were. Maybe it was back in 1976, when NASA named the space shuttle prototype the U.S.S. Enterprise, or six months ago, when Paramount chose a fourth Star Trek series as the flagship of its new television network. Or it could have been any number of landmarks in between: when Star Trek: The Next Generation became the highest-rated first-run syndicated show in history; when seven Star Trek feature films raked in more than $500 million; when more than 100 Star Trek novels became best-sellers; when readers of TV Guide named The Next Generation's Patrick Stewart--a bald guy--the sexiest man on TV.

Fact is, it's impossible to be alive in this culture without significant Trek awareness. In the spirit of intergalactic scholarship, we present the ultimate package of Star Trek lore. (For those of you who get lost, there's a glossary on page 64.) Read on, and prosper.

"Wanna See The Captain's Log?"

Even green women like to be romanced. Here are some pickup lines used by various Starfleet crew members.

"Are you wearing some unusual kind of perfume, or something radioactive, my dear?"--Mccoy To One Of Mudd's Women

"Commander, tell me about your sexual organs."--Genderless Alien To Riker

"I am programmed in multiple techniques. A broad variety of pleasuring."--Data To Tasha Yar When She Asked Him If He Was "Fully Functional"

"I can see you are a woman not only of breeding but also of wit and sagacity." --Picard to a Holodeck Countess

"Kiss me."--Kirk To Android Babe, Ostensibly To Test Her Programming

"Grrrr."--Worf To Alien Temptress Kamala

Bonus 1: A holodeck-date brush-off line. "It's been a lovely program and you're a terrific guy, but I just don't feel that way about you."--Christi Henshaw To La Forge

Bonus 2: Why technogeeks can't get laid in the 24th century, either. "I just don't get it. I can fieldstrip a fusion reactor. I can realign a power-transfer tunnel. Why can't I make anything work with a woman like Christi?"-- La Forge, Answering His Own Question

This Old Starship

Is something in need of repair, but you have trouble remembering the appropriate techno-babble? Use this clip-and-save troubleshooter.

Symptom: Power fluctuation in the transporter's annular confinement beam.

Possible cause: Field imbalance.

Adjustment: Check the Heisenberg compensators and run a level-one diagnostic of the pattern buffers.

Symptom: The power requirements of shuttle craft do not match those of your starship.

Possible cause: Incompatible polarity.

Adjustment: Use a variable phase inverter to align the ship's power with the circuits of the shuttle craft.

Symptom: Warp drive not supplying enough energy.

Possible cause: Natural limitations of the matter-antimatter reaction chamber.

Adjustment: Use multiple injector streams to hit more than one dilithium crystal facet.

Symptom: Someone is unconscious.

Possible cause: Doesn't matter.

Adjustment: 2cc Cordrazine. 25cc if Klingon.

The Intergalactic Professional Bartender's School

Chateau Picard: Fine wine from the Picard family vineyards of La Barre, France.

Finagle's Folly: Mixed drink invented by McCoy. Yes, he's a doctor, but damn it, he's a thirsty doctor.

Prune juice: Earth beverage. An appreciative Worf declared it "a warrior's drink."

Raktajino: Klingon iced coffee popular at Quark's bar.

Romulan ale: Baby-blue grog powerful enough to be banned by the Federation.

Samarian sunset: A delicate balance of liquors that appears clear until the rim of the glass is tapped, whereupon it develops a multicolored glow. A good drink when you have a little money left over in your special-effects slush fund.

Saurian brandy: OK drink, classy bottle.

Synthehol: Hangover-free alcohol substitute. Like a 24th century O'Doul's.

Tzartak aperitif: Its vapor point is one-half degree below body temperature, so it evaporates upon contact with the tongue.

Miller Space-Time Continuum

Trekkers don't just sit around watching Star Trek all day. They sit around watching Star Trek and getting drunk. Here's one version of the Star Trek: The Next Generation drinking game making the rounds on college campuses and the Internet.

Prime directive: Have one sip of beer per successfully met condition.

Anybody says:

-"Open hailing frequencies."

-"Medical emergency."

-"Belay that order."

-"Energize."

-"You have the bridge."

-"Hell," "damn" or any other profanity. (See Riker's special swearing rules that appear later in this list.)

Picard says:

-"Make it so."

-"Engage!"

-"Proceed."

-"Come" (two sips if it is said in his personal quarters).

-"Captain's log"; two sips if it's supplemental.

Worf says:

-"Impressive."

-"Admirable."

Data says:

-"Fascinating."

-"Interesting."

-"Accessing."

Riker:

-Swears (two sips if it's "hell," whole beer if he asks, "What the hell is going on?").

-Walks forward as if he were trying to knock down an imaginary door with his forehead.

-Brags about his trombone.

Picard:

-Straightens his uniform.

-Tries to speak French.

Data:

- Performs a self-diagnostic.

- Reveals his innards.

- Pets or holds Spot.

Geordi:

- Sees something other people can't.

- His Visor is taken or is knocked off.

Beverly:

- Can't figure out some bizarre medical problem.

Troi:

- Talks about chocolate; two sips if she eats something chocolate.

- Has an empathic insight about something that's really obvious.

Wesley:

- Talks back to his mom.

O'Brien:

- Speaks.

Anybody:

- Drinks; four if it's Picard drinking Earl Grey tea.

- Reads a book.

- Is addressed by first name; two if there's some kind of sexual tension going on.

- Appears in dress uniform (one sip per scene per officer).

- Appears in casual clothes (one sip per scene per officer); two if it's Beverly in a sweater or Picard in his chest-revealing bedwear.

- Plays an instrument; two if it's Data.

- Preaches the Prime Directive; two if it's not Picard.

- Preaches about "humanity's unique potential."

- Implies that Ten Forward is a happening place.

Alerts:

- Yellow alert: one sip.

- Red alert: two sips.

- Intruder alert: three sips.

Any time:

- There's an argument in a turbolift.

- A shuttle craft seems like an unsafe place to be.

- Something goes wrong with the holodeck.

- An "old earth saying" is brought up; two if Data has to have it explained to him.

- Klingon is spoken; two sips per scene in which Klingons are alone and have no obvious reason to speak English but do so anyway.

- A female character has flawless make-up after she's been through the wringer.

- There's a token alien in the background with no lines; two if it's a Vulcan.

- A communicator isn't working or is blocked.

- Somebody uses a communicator or intercom without going to a panel or touching anything.

- There's a countdown.

- The Enterprise does battle (shots must be fired): two sips per scene.

- The living quarters of the Enterprise separate from the ship before battle: the whole beer.

Trek Lit

The easy joke about Trekkies--sorry, Trekkers--is the one William Shatner made in that notorious Saturday Night Live skit: "Get a life."

There are indeed some enthusiasts who aren't content with the shows and movies--or even reality as the rest of us know it--and get a Trek life by living and writing it for themselves.

Consider the space warior wanna-bes who practice their Klingon language skills by studying the official dictionary and audiotape, or by taking a fan-sponsored correspondence course. Advanced linguists are translating Shakespeare's writings and the Bible into Klingon.

Meanwhile, over at Pocket Books, the publishers of the Star Trek series dish out a never-ending supply of fantasies to their obsessive audience.

Since the mid-Eighties, Star Trek novels have become best-sellers. It's no surprise that Pocket Books, a division of Paramount's Simon & Schuster, decided to crank out two Trek books a month.

The downside of having such a devoted audience--especially when it's a devoted audience of Trekkers--is that they want to write Star Trek novels almost as much as they want to read them. John Ordover, a Trek editor, receives about a thousand unsolicited (text concluded on page 136) Trekkin' (continued form page 65) manuscripts a year.

Virtually all of the hopeful Trek writers are women. Seventy percent of their manuscripts fall into one category, what Trek insiders call the Mary Sue. "The star is a beautiful young woman, often a teenager, often half human, half alien," explains Ordover. "She's the smartest person to graduate from Starfleet Academy. She's smarter than Data, a better diplomat than Picard. She single-handedly saves the ship, and everybody falls in love with her." And, he adds, "she almost always has the same initials as the author."

Pocket Books does not publish Mary Sues.

As for other things that Pocket Books won't publish, here are excerpts from its Star Trek submission guidelines, with annotations by Ordover:

• No offspring or close relations that have not already been established. ("I have seen approximately 200 books about Kirk's daughter. They're variations on the Mary Sue.")

• No traveling in time to change history, learn something, rescue someone, buy groceries, etc.

• No plots that mix the characters from one series with another. ("We even got one in which the Star Trek crew rescues the people from Lost in Space. Dr. Smith turned out to be a godlike being who was testing the Robinsons to see how much they would take before they killed him.")

• No explanation of the Vulcan way beyond what has been done in the TV series or movies.

• No Pon farr in Spock.

• No plot that hinges on or describes sexual relations (normal, abnormal or otherwise). No books that suggest anything other than friendship between Kirk and Spock or any other members of the crew. ("There's a lot of this, but we don't see most of it because fans write it only for themselves and one another." Indeed, the genre, originally known as K/S--for Kirk/Spock--but now just called "slash," has been wildly popular since the Seventies. It can be found in zines and on the Internet newsgroups alt.sex.fetish.startrek and alt.sexy.bald. captains. Ordover jokes about the enduring popularity of W/W--Worf/Wesley--among Next Generation fans. "You know, 'Come up to my cabin, boy, and I'll show you what wormhole really means.' ")

In fact, Pocket books editors will no longer even look at manuscripts that haven't been solicited from agents. Ordover offers a more realistic submission guideline: "Don't send us anything, please."

Glossary

* Borg--Half robot, half human, all evil.

* Cardassians--Snake-like aliens with a fondness for torture.

* Delta Quadrant--The other side of the galaxy.

* Empathic Metamorph--Beautiful female alien who lives to serve men. No, really.

* The Federation--Like the UN, only not a laughingstock.

* Ferengi--Short, moneygrubbing aliens with big ears.

* Holodeck--Produces holographic but extremely lifelike simulations of any environment. A playroom for restless (and occasionally horny) starship crew.

* Holosuite--Holodeck in the back room of seedy bars.

* Klingons--A warrior race. Very spiritual, and they spit when they talk.

* Mudd's Women--Artificial mail-order brides.

* Pon Farr--How Vulcans go into heat.

* The Prime Directive--"Thou shalt not interfere in the normal development of any society." It has lots of loopholes.

* Q--A guy with godlike powers, a warped sense of humor and a lot of time on his hands.

* Replicators--Extraordinarily convenient technology for making anything out of nothing.

* Romulans--Like the Klingons but with smoother foreheads, and they never befriended humans.

* Starfleet--The navy of the United Federation of Planets.

* Starfleet Academy--The Annapolis of Starfleet. Established at the Presidio in 2161.

* Starfleet Command--The brass. Meddling bureaucrats, but their HQ has a nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

* Ten Forward--The forwardmost point of the Enterprise D's Deck Ten. Also, the name of the lounge there.

* Transporter--How to get there from here.

* Trill--Human on the outside, slug on the inside. By sheer luck, Deep Space Nine's resident Trill, Dax, currently sports the body of a hot babe.

* Turbolift--Elevator.

* Visor--Visual instrument and sensory organ replacement. For blind people.

* Vulcans--Logical, emotionless aliens with pointy ears.

* Warp Drive--Engine.

* Wormhole--Corridor through space.

Where & How to Buy on page 155.

"Damn it, Jim! I'm a Doctor. Not a Bricklayer!"

--"Bones" McCoy

"Engage!"

"Space, The Final Frontier. These are the Voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its Five-Year Mission: To Explore Strange New Worlds, to Seek out New Life and New Civilizations, To Boldly go where No Man has gone before." --Opening Narrative from the Original "Star Trek:"

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"I was Out Saving the Galaxy when your Grandfather was Still in Diapers." --Kirk to Picard

In "Star Trek: Generations"

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"Live Long and Prosper." --Mr. Spock